Tag Archive for chemistry set

This post is in response to some sad emails from those of you who’s head gets turned every time you pass the display counter at Starbucks, or a bag of Stacy’s pita chips, or cave when a bread basket wafts up your nose. “Good days” and “bad days” are going to be a thing of your past, because you can Change Your Brain Patterns – I promise! Repeat that to yourself out loud, because your brain believes what your mouth says. All Dieting has to stop, and healthy beliefs and facts need to be absorbed, if you want a different body.

The data consistently shows that Dieting Causes Weight Gain. It’s a sure-thing that if you try to restrict calories, there will be rebound binges.

Want a plan? Here you go:

Focus on changing your habits and thought patterns. Habits are the ONLY way to a lean, healthy body. Habits are what we do day after day after day, with very little effort. We develop healthy habits through planning, practice, and belief.

( If you believe that you can cancel out crappy food with starvation or heavy exercise, you’ll never keep your weight off. Ever. If you believe your body needs nutrient dense food to run well, you’ll be lean and healthy. )

Eat three meals a day. Don’t snack, at all. Make sure all your meals are at least moderate in size, bigger if you’re active. (Tiny diet meals cause snacking; let’s change this so you’re not high on blood sugar and insulin all day.) (Insulin is a “fat storage” hormone.)

Eat plenty of good fats, good proteins, TONS of vegetables, some fruit, some nuts and seeds, and some dairy if you’re good with that.

Eat on a schedule ( morning, noon, and night). Skipping a meal because you’re not hungry, maybe trying to “eat intuitively”?….Ugh. Disaster waiting to happen! Hunger influences our choices; wait til you’re hungry, and there’s a good chance your choices will be BAD.

Don’t rely on Willpower to get you through the day; willpower is in very finite supply. Using willpower depletes the glucose stores in your brain and leaves you feeling weak and depleted; what psychologists call, “decision fatigue“. Disaster waiting to happen – again! Work on developing new Habits and Thought Patterns.

Quit living by the seat of your pants. Plan, Plan, Plan, and then sit down and Plan. If you Fail to Plan, then just Plan to Fail, because changing your thought patterns and your habits isn’t going to happen naturally.

You think that you can’t do this because you’re too busy? Oh please! Get rid of that excuse! Tomorrow I’m posting a Success Story by my friend, Terry Kaye. She’s a mom of 3 boys, two of which have health issues, she works a few different jobs, she works out, and she cooks every day.

Who do you know who isn’t busy?? And don’t we want to teach our kids how to successfully handle normal, real life? Plan, Plan, Plan, and Plan.

Delete any thoughts of “making up for this later”, or starting over tomorrow/Sunday/Monday/the 1st etc. That’s ” Diet ” thinking, seriously. Diet thinking means you’re negotiating with yourself that if you eat crappy food now, you’ll starve yourself later; which would work if your body was a Calories In Calories Out system. It’s not. It’s a Chemistry Set. The chemistry you set in motion with lots of crappy carbs and toxic chemicals will NOT be balanced out with Starvation or Excessive Exercise. Ever.

Delete any thoughts that carby foods made with flour and sugar (muffins, donuts, cookies, etc) at Wegman’s, Whole Foods, or Trader Joe’s are Healthy because you bought them at Wegman’s, Whole Foods, or Trader Joe’s. Products made with grain flour and sugar are still products made with grain flour and sugar. They’ll spike your blood glucose, your insulin, and your cortisol, and put on belly fat. Junk food is junk food.

If you really want to change the way you habitually think about food, get in touch with me. The more you understand how your body works, the easier it is to make smart choices. Habits are the ONLY way to a lean, healthy body. Habits are what we do day after day after day, with very little thought or effort, and ZERO decision fatigue. Does it take a few months to change your habits? Yes. Looking back though, what’s a few months. Ask yourself, where do you want to be Next Year on This Date. Exactly where you are right now, doing the same old habits and patterns; or lean, healthy, and using newly instilled habits? Ask yourself this: how long have you been using the same old Diet methods to try and change your body? How many years? What’s the definition of Insanity? Doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.

Everyone is capable of change, but doing the same old thing will always bring about the same old results. Commit to Real Whole Food, and commit to changing your thoughts and habits, you can do this!

I received a couple emails this week that I want to share. The first one is from a woman named Chris who’s struggling with staying on a plan. Here goes:

Hi Debbie,

I’ve been reading your blog, and other paleo blogs, and trying to follow the paleo eating plan. I’m starving and I’m miserable, and I can’t go more than two days without eating cereal, crackers, or whatever is on the conference table at my office. Is this impossible for someone with no willpower like me?

I told Chris I’d answer her in my blog, because this scenario is very, very common. But first, here’s an email from Missy, who’s been working with me for a few months now. Missy is a single working mom; the definition of busy. She’s struggled with food addictions and consistency, but her PERSISTENCE is paying off:

I hit the 10 lb mark on Saturday, already…. without even really thinking about it or concentrating on it other than to not eat grains. my mood and energy keeps slowly getting better and better and i’m feeling very motivated. people are starting to ask me what i’m doing and I go off like a crazy person about eating real whole food. hahaha I usually apologize and give them time to let it sink in and I give them the resources that I’ve found as well as your website and just tell them to inform themselves. be a smart consumer. don’t allow yourself to be misled by big food and big pharma. there’s no magic pill. there’s no starvation diet. one of the best lines in this book so far is “your body can’t tell the difference between jenny craig’s packaged meals and concentration-camp fare.”

I want to shout all this stuff from the rooftops!

I made a new dish over the weekend with spaghetti squash. it was creamy pesto chicken with peas and carrots over spaghetti squash. YUM! I made my boyfriend try it (he stopped at taco bell on the way to his house – I stopped at the grocery store), and he said that he would eat it if he HAD to, but that it tasted funny. haha as we were sitting there watching tv, me satiated and happy, him complaining that his stomach didn’t feel good and that he was starting to get hungry again (already only about an hour after he ate his taco bell), so I offered him some of my “pasta”. he said that he would eat it….. and then I got him to admit that it was good. 😀 I win. he ate a whole bowl!

The book Missy is referring to is one I recommend all the time, The Mood Cure or the Diet Cure, by Julia Ross. She and I are meeting this week to discuss the protocols and science behind it. I’ve said again and again, the amino acid therapy this book uses to re-adjust moods, addictions, anxiety, etc, is incredible, honest.

Back to Chris,.. is eating Real Whole Food possible if you have no willpower? YES!! I used to eat literally a few boxes of ice cream a WEEK, and I could finish off a box of Kashi or Mini Wheats in TWO days. And there-in lies the problem: sugar, flour, and chemicals are incredibly addictive. You have to give them up if you want a healthy body and a healthy weight. Unfortunately, your addicted mind will rebel badly if your addicted body isn’t getting them. What to do? Be patient with yourself. You’re breaking years ( decades??) of bad habits; neural pathways and brain patterns that have been nurtured and sustained over and over again. You’ve got to build healthy habits!

Here’s a little strategy: (1) You’re going to have to change the way you think about food. Do the donuts on the conference table call to you? Then you don’t think of them as sugar/flour/chemical bombs that cause cancer, diabetes, and heart attacks. Want to dive into the bread basket? Then you’re not thinking that the high insulin and blood sugar will give you wrinkles or make you impotent. Think you’ll satisfy your needs with Weight Watchers frozen desserts? Those chemical cancer factories will in NO WAY satisfy your brains desire for ACTUAL NUTRIENTS, and before you know it, the Rebound Binge happens. Educate yourself!! Read my site, read Grain Brain, read Wheat Belly, read Mood Cure. Stop thinking of food in terms of calories; look around. Where has the Calorie Myth gotten us? 70% overweight, and everyone’s sick. That whole line we tell ourselves, “I’ll eat this now and exercise/starve/purge/just eat broccoli.. later” DOESN’T work. Ever. Your body is a Chemistry Set, not a Math Equation.

(2) Set yourself up for success. If you’re hoping that you can keep your trigger foods in the house and ignore them, you’re wrong. No One In Your House needs those foods. Kids DON’T need sugar, flour, or chemicals, it has the same destructive effects on them as it does on you. The average disease takes 20 years to manifest. Just because your kids are slim now doesn’t mean poison food isn’t affecting them, because it is. Toss that excuse out the window.

You MUST start planning your week; ask your self: when can I shop, when can I cook, when can I pack? What can I freeze and use later? Then plan it and write it down on your schedule. It’s a mind set. Go into your office on a full belly, have a great lunch packed, know you’ll be eating Real Whole Food for dinner, and junk food at the meetings won’t call so loudly. Out running around all day? PACK! and not stupid diet food, but Real Whole Foods, and those toxic fast food/gas station restaurants won’t be tempting.

If you’re persistent with your self education, and consistent with your planning and scheduling, change happens. New habits form. The best thing? Willpower, which uses up a lot of energy, is quite draining, and completely limited, isn’t necessary anymore. Do you look at a dirty cigarette on the street and ever have even a tiny desire to put it in your mouth? No, because you think it’s gross. There’s no effort whatsoever involved with that decision. Keep learning, stay determined, and pretty soon, there’s very little effort involved with your food choices. You’ll just choose delicious food that you know your body needs to thrive. You’ll become a Nutrient Seeker to your very core, and then the issue of willpower isn’t even an issue anymore.

Chris, and everyone else struggling out there, please don’t give up on yourself. Real change, Brain Change, takes time. You’ve had a lifetime of hypnotizing by BigPhovernment that CaloriesInCaloriesOut works, and now consciously, you know it doesn’t. It’s your subconscious that needs work. If it’s important to you, then schedule a few minutes every day to fill your brain with the thoughts you want to think. It’s not going to happen with luck; our life is what we make of it. If you need help with your habits and consistency, get in touch with me. I can help you understand your Biology and give you tips for your Psychology, to turn you into a Real Whole Foodie. ***** REMEMBER, TESTOSTERONE LADDEN GUEST POST BY MARK ON APRIL 13, TUNE IN FOR A MAN’S PERSPECTIVE ON BEING HEALTHY AND LEAN. *****